who do they consider ‘homegrown radicals’? what rapidly evolving threat do they pose? and to whom?

homegrown radicals pose a threat to the agenda. Zbigniew Brzezinski fears the ‘massive global political awakening’:

Brzezinski said: “For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive.”

“Authorities suspect Awlaki helped mastermind last year’s Christmas Day underwear bombing plot in Detroit, and a recent scheme to blow up cargo planes travelling from Yemen to Europe and the United States.”

The underwear bomber Abdulmutallab was able to board only with the help of an unidentified well dressed man seen at the boarding gate:

“Awlaki is believed to be in Yemen, but thanks to the Internet, his reach is global…”

“The ability to go into your basement, turn on your computer, find a site that has this kind of hatred spewed … they have an ability to take somebody who is perhaps just interested, perhaps just on the edge, and take them over to the other side,” he said.”

This is how the FCC got the Net Neutrality Passed, which just happened today:

“Turning to how terror suspects are tried, Holder said he still believes the “decision as to how people get prosecuted, where they get prosecuted, is an executive branch function. Even if those suspects are being held now at Guantanamo Bay. Holder said Congress should not be interfering with that.”

Lithium is a much more powerful substance than fluoride, with far greater potential side effects. Critics say that drugging the water is a massive infringement and equate this use of pharmaceuticals to something out of Aldous Huxley’s dystopic classic “Brave New World.”

Robert Carton, a former senior scientist for the EPA, argues that the government’s fortifying drinking water with any substance, even fluoride, violates people’s fundamental right—codified in the Nuremburg Code—to give informed consent to any medical intervention. “All ethical codes for the protection of individuals who are subject to medical procedures,” Carton wrote in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, “whether research or routine medical treatment, endorse the basic requirement for voluntary informed consent.”

To mimic conditions in the wild, scientists exposed the estuary-dwelling shrimp Echinogammarus marinus to the antidepressant fluoxetine at levels detected in average sewage-treatment waste. Fluoxetine is the key ingredient in the drugs Prozac and Sarafem.

Shrimp normally gravitate toward safe, dark corners. But when exposed to fluoxetine, the animals were five times more likely to swim toward a bright region of water, the team discovered.

“This behavior makes them much more likely to be eaten by a predator, such as a fish or bird,” said study co-author Alex Ford, a biologist at U.K.’s University of Portsmouth.

The fluoxetine likely makes shrimp’s nerves more sensitive to serotonin, a brain chemical known to alter moods and sleep patterns, according to the study, recently published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. Full Story

A study shows that drug traces in our waste can affect marine life behavior, but can crustaceans have feelings?

I have friends who are always talking about happy pigs and happy chickens — left to roam freely, eating real food instead of weird commercial food pellets, given the occasional backrub. But pity the poor shrimp! No one is raising happy shrimp … on purpose anyway. But all the Prozac we’ve been taking may be doing the work for us, and marine biologists at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. have found that enough of the drug passes through our bodies directly into the wastewater to seriously change the behavior of shrimp who swim in it: They’re killing themselves. But do shrimp even have emotions?

Shrimp are a shy and retiring lot, living in shadows and dark crevices to hide from predators (and nurse their psychic scars?). But when they’re swimming in concentrations of Prozac (or, more specifically, the chemical fluoxetine) as those found in the water around some urban areas, they become five times as likely to swim toward light, making them easy prey. And sadly, pollutants from urban runoff are in highest concentration in river estuaries and right near the coast … which is where shrimp tend to live. Aside from the tragic irony, if shrimp populations start to collapse, it could have a serious effect on the established balance of the food chain. And most wastewater treatment plants aren’t geared toward removing residual drugs from the water. (A few years ago, scientists found fish changing sexes because of contraceptives and other chemicals in runoff.) Full Story

Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the country remains blighted by Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide used by US forces during the conflict. Families with disabled children are demanding more help from the US government.

Between 1962 and 1971, the United States sprayed approximately 20 million gallons of dioxin-contaminated herbicides over some 6 million acres of Vietnamese terrain. Among these was a compound known as Agent Orange, named for the orange stripe on its label (other varieties were marked with different colors but were less widely used). These chemicals wiped out forests and crops that were used by opposition forces for cover and food. In the course of this, hundreds of thousands of U.S. service personnel and millions of Vietnamese were exposed to the chemicals in the air, water, and soil and through food raised on contaminated farms.U.S. Vietnam Veterans and Agent Orange: Understanding the Impact 40 Years Later

There are of course, many Vietnam Vets who have agent orange (AO) related disabilities. I worked with homeless vets (veteran homelessness a whole other issue) with AO problems. One of the men was the father of a disabled son directly related to AO. Another had foot rot, still festering decades later.

Since Desert Storm there is a new chemical weapon that is much more damaging – depleted uranium (DU). AO is thought to last for 100 years; DU is said to last for 4.5 million. The birth defects in some DU areas are very high with unfathomable deformities.

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It is Our Responsibility to Examine and Change Society

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it - at no matter what risk. -- James Baldwin